Note 59 — Chapter LV · FROM THE PEACE OF NIKIAS TO THE OLYMPIC FESTIVAL OF OLYMPIAD NINETY.

I dissent entirely from the judgment of Dr. Thirlwall, who repeats what is the usual representation of Sokratês and the Sophists, depicting Alkibiadês as “ensnared by the Sophists,” while Sokratês is described as a good genius preserving him from their corruptions (Hist. of Greece, vol. iii, ch. xxiv, pp. 312, 313, 314). I think him also mistaken when he distinguishes so pointedly Sokratês from the Sophists; when he describes the Sophists as “pretenders to wisdom;” as “a new school;” as “teaching that there was no real difference between truth and falsehood, right and wrong,” etc.

All the plausibility that there is in this representation, arises from a confusion between the original sense and the modern sense of the word Sophist; the latter seemingly first bestowed upon the word by Plato and Aristotle. In the common ancient acceptation of the word at Athens, it meant not a school of persons professing common doctrines, but a class of men bearing the same name, because they derived their celebrity from analogous objects of study and common intellectual occupation. The Sophists were men of similar calling and pursuits, partly speculative, partly professional; but they differed widely from each other, both in method and doctrine. (See for example Isokratês, cont. Sophistas, Orat. xiii; Plato, Meno. p. 87 B.) Whoever made himself eminent in speculative pursuits, and communicated his opinions by public lecture, discussion, or conversation, was called a Sophist, whatever might be the conclusions which he sought to expound or defend. The difference between taking money, and expounding gratuitously, on which Sokratês himself was so fond of dwelling (Xenoph. Memor. i, 6, 12), has plainly no essential bearing on the case. When Æschinês the orator reminds the dikasts, “Recollect that you Athenians put to death the Sophist Sokratês, because he was shown to have been the teacher of Kritias,” (Æschin. cont. Timarch. c. 34, p. 74,) he uses the word in its natural and true Athenian sense. He had no point to make against Sokratês, who had then been dead more than forty years; but he describes him by his profession or occupation, just as he would have said, Hippokratês the physician, Pheidias the sculptor, etc. Dionysius of Halikarn. calls both Plato and Isokratês sophists (Ars Rhetor. De Compos. Verborum, p. 208 R.). The Nubes of Aristophanês, and the defences put forth by Plato and Xenophon, show that Sokratês was not only called by the name Sophist, but regarded just in the same light as that in which Dr. Thirlwall presents to us what he calls “the new School of the Sophists;” as “a corruptor of youth, indifferent to truth or falsehood, right or wrong,” etc. See a striking passage in the Politicus of Plato, c. 38, p. 299 B. Whoever thinks, as I think, that these accusations were falsely advanced against Sokratês, will be careful how he advances them against the general profession to which Sokratês belonged.

That there were unprincipled and immoral men among the class of Sophists—as there are and always have been among schoolmasters, professors, lawyers, etc., and all bodies of men—I do not doubt; in what proportion, we cannot determine. But the extreme hardship of passing a sweeping condemnation on the great body of intellectual teachers at Athens, and canonizing exclusively Sokratês and his followers, will be felt, when we recollect that the well-known Apologue, called the Choice of Hercules, was the work of the Sophist Prodikus, and his favorite theme of lecture (Xenophon, Memor. ii, 1, 21-34). To this day, that Apologue remains without a superior, for the impressive simplicity with which it presents one of the most important points of view of moral obligation: and it has been embodied in a greater number of books of elementary morality than anything of Sokratês, Plato, or Xenophon. To treat the author of that Apologue, and the class to which he belonged, as teaching “that there was no real difference between right and wrong, truth and falsehood,” etc., is a criticism not in harmony with the just and liberal tone of Dr. Thirlwall’s history.

I will add that Plato himself, in a very important passage of the Republic (vi, c. 6, 7, pp. 492-493), refutes the imputation against the Sophists of being specially the corruptors of youth. He represents them as inculcating upon their youthful pupils that morality which was received as true and just in their age and society; nothing better, nothing worse. The grand corruptor, he says, is society itself; the Sophists merely repeat the voice and judgment of society. Without inquiring at present how far Plato or Sokratês were right in condemning the received morality of their countrymen, I most fully accept his assertion that the great body of the contemporary professional teachers taught what was considered good morality among the Athenian public: there were doubtless some who taught a better morality, others who taught a worse. And this may be said with equal truth of the great body of professional teachers in every age and nation.

Xenophon enumerates various causes to which he ascribes the corruption of the character of Alkibiadês; wealth, rank, personal beauty, flatterers, etc.; but he does not name the Sophists among them (Memorab. i, 2. 24, 25).